Put cashews in blender, blend briefly. Add carob powder and sugar. Add oil a little at a time and blend until the desired consistency is reached. Use as sandwich spread as a Nutella substitute.

Notes:

1) Bought organic raw cashews from Eat Organic. A pack (seems like just over 1 cup) cost S$12 but tastes very fresh, unlike a lot of commercial raw nuts which have a raw and stale taste.

2) I bought toasted carob powder from Organic Paradise, S$3.70 for 250g (Eat Organic doesn’t sell carob, I was rather surprised.). There was a choice of raw or toasted. I wonder if there is any difference between the two for Failsafers?

3) Reduced the amount of sugar in recipe – have done so for all recipes in The Failsafe Cookbook and found the result more than sweet enough. In any case, carob doesn’t have the bitter overtones of pure cocoa so tastes sweeter, and hence less sugar is needed when replacing cocoa with carob.

4) End result tastes very nice, and strangely enough, tastes like banana!?!

5) *WARNING* the cashew-carob paste is terribly heaty/yang! I tasted 1/4 tsp and my throat started to hurt immediately. I will just have to save this for special treats and consume in tiny amounts. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised because of the concentrated nuts and oil. My guess is that carob is not as heaty as real cocoa but my guess is that it is still on the heaty end of the scale, and the fact that I used toasted carob must have made it even more yang.

Moral of the story: Failsafe eating may avoid certain nasty food reactions but doesn’t mean it’s good for you in terms of having a balancing constitution in Traditional Chinese Medicine terms *sigh*……